A front-row seat in the plodding war on the Taliban

The squad jumps from the back end of a Chinook helicopter into a swirl of sand kicked up by the rotors. We take positions on the bank of a mountain stream and pause in silence, scanning the hillside for movement.

The eight-member team is young - the oldest is 28 - and all are fighters of the elite 82nd Airborne, nicknamed the "Ghost Busters." Their mission: To work with about 40 US and 10 Afghan soldiers from a nearby base to sweep villages never before visited by US forces. They're looking for Taliban or their weapons.

For the next five days, I will have a front-row seat in what some call "The Other War," where 18,000 US troops continue fighting four years after ousting the Taliban government and sending Osama bin Laden into hiding. I will accompany a US Army squad carrying a mere 40 lbs. of body armor, notebooks, water, and MREs, while they carry up to 115 lbs. of "battle rattle" - guns, ammo, food, body armor, radios, and night-vision equipment.

Together, we will tell a lot of unprintable jokes, see a lot of sheep, find a few Taliban weapons caches, and try to reassure scared villagers.

My team's role this morning is to climb a steep, 1,650-foot hill to secure the high ground. They will keep watch over the roads while other US squads, including troops from the fledgling Afghan Army, search a village that Taliban fighters have often used as a rest stop.

The squad leader, Sgt. Jeremy Brannan of Panama City, Fla., almost inaudibly gives the order to move: "Let's go."

These remote mountains, stretching from western Ghazni through Zabul, Kandahar, and Uruzgan provinces, have been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting - and highest casualty rates - since the Taliban government fell in 2001. This is partly because of the insertion of small squads like Sergeant Brannan's into ever-more-remote corners of Afghanistan in an effort to disturb Taliban hideouts and entice their elusive foe into engagements. When the Taliban stand to fight US soldiers, who are aided by American air power, the insurgents usually lose.

Soldiers like Brannan and his men accept the dangers of their work.

"For so long, it was quiet here, then it got kicked up," says Brannan, sitting at a watch post high above the village, where the house-to-house search for weapons has begun. "I think they hide up in the mountains and see how big an element we're sending in. Mostly they don't fight. But when they do, it's mostly spray, pray, and run."

The squad is led by a few veterans from the Iraq war, such as Brannan and Pvt. Mike Patraw of Platteville, Wisc. The men say they are shocked at the poor Afghan living conditions, and Brannan says it's hard to know which conflict is more dangerous. "I'd be tempted to say Iraq, but we've had a lot of dudes die here recently," he says. "But the Taliban aren't very good. Mostly it seems like lucky shots."

Brannan's men meet the danger, and the physical challenge of climbing up mountains loaded with equipment, with a sense of humor. As an outsider, it occurs to me that the standard GI gear must include a rifle, camouflage, and an unabridged Dictionary of Scatological Terms and Crude Jokes.

Trained in the woodland terrain of Ft. Bragg, N.C., these men are used to rugged conditions. But on this day, they struggle up Afghan hillsides of loose slate and sedimentary rock with difficulty. Some, like Private Patraw, carry M-240 Bravos, a medium-caliber machine gun that weighs about 50 lbs. Others carry the lighter M-4 carbines, but help out carrying the heavy ammunition for the M-240, along with several gallons of water and pounds of food.

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